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• Part 1 of 4: Choosing a place for your plants
• Tips

If you grow fruit and vegetables, then you have probably thought about growing tomatoes. There are many different tomato varieties with delicious flavors and tomatoes are also good for your health, so why not choose tomatoes? If you plant, grow, harvest and care for the tomatoes properly, you will have a successful harvest year after year. You can learn how to grow tomatoes from seeds or young plants by following a few simple steps.

To step

Part 1 of 4: Choosing a place for your plants

1. If possible, plant the tomato plants in the soil itself. You can plant almost any type of tomato plant and you need to water the plants less often than if they were in a planter. This is also a method to choose if you want to harvest a lot of tomatoes.
   • Find a spot that gets six to eight hours of sunlight daily. It will be difficult to disinfect the entire site or replace the soil if a disease breaks out caused by microorganisms living in the soil. Such a garden is more attractive to moles, birds, squirrels and deer.
2. Add a lot compost to the soil in your garden. Tomatoes grow best in soil that contains a lot of organic matter. If you don't compost, use store-bought compost that contains granite dust and topsoil. You need 25-40 kg of compost per square meter. Add compost to the top six to eight inches of soil.
   • Before planting the seedling or plant in the soil, throw a few handfuls of organic matter or eggshells into the hole. As the roots grow deeper, they reach this nutrient layer just in time to grow more tomatoes on your plants.
3. Plant the plants 45 to 90 inches apart. This is usually enough space to walk between the plants to water them, remove weeds and harvest the tomatoes. If you plant the tomatoes in a warm place, space them 25 to 45 centimeters apart. Plants in cages can protect each other's tomatoes because they are in each other's shade, so that the tomatoes do not burn.
4. Water the plants every seven to 10 days. Do this after the first week and give each plant about 500 ml of warm water per day. It is better not to water the plants from above, as this can affect them by diseases. It is better to water the roots with a dip irrigation system or an irrigation hose.
   • Water the plants in the morning to prevent fungal and fungal diseases.
   • Water the plants less often after ten days. See if the plants receive three to eight inches of rainfall weekly. If not, give each plant about 7.5 liters of water per week. Begin this at the end of the second week after planting.
   • Water the plants more when they get bigger and the weather is warm. Give the plants three to four liters of water two to three times a week. Make sure the soil is moist and not soaking wet.
5. Use mulch. After one or two weeks, lay mulch of straw or dried grass around the plants. For example, you should keep the weeds away and keep the soil moist when the weather is dry. The mulch should be two to three inches thick and surround the plant at least 12 inches.
6. Pay attention to storage. These are branches that grow in the area between the main stem and the other branches. As they grow, they absorb some of the plant's nutrients. If you don't prune these branches, more tomatoes will grow on the plant, but the tomatoes will be smaller. Pull off the branches to get bigger tomatoes.
7. Protect the plants from the heat. You could plant tomato varieties such as Phoenix, Heatmaster and Solar Fire when it gets very hot in your garden. Find a spot that gets full sun in the morning and partial sun in the afternoon. Protect your plants with shade cloths between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.
   • If the tomatoes start to ripen during a heat wave with nighttime temperatures above 24 ° C and daytime temperatures above 35 ° C, harvest the tomatoes earlier. The tomatoes stop ripening when it is very hot.
8. Keep an eye on the humidity. Tomato plants need a high humidity of between 80 and 90 percent during the day and a moderate humidity of between 65 and 75 percent at night to bear fruit. At a humidity higher than 90% or lower than 65%, the plants can be affected by nose rot. If you grow tomatoes in a greenhouse, use a hair hygrometer to measure the humidity. To increase the humidity outside or in your greenhouse, spray water on the plants. Lower the humidity in your greenhouse by ensuring better ventilation.
   • In very humid weather, it is best to choose tomato varieties that are resistant to moisture, such as Ferline, Legend and Fantasio.
9. Prevent nose rot. With nose rot, the tomatoes turn black on the underside and are eaten. Once a plant has nose rot, it is too late to save it. It is best to try to prevent the disease. Nose rot is caused by a lack of calcium. To avoid this problem, do the following:
   • Bring about four liters of water and one tablespoon (15 ml) of lemon juice to a boil.
   • Add six tablespoons of bone meal to the water. Stir well. The flour does not have to dissolve completely.
   • Boil the mixture for half an hour with a lid on the pan.
   • Let the mixture cool.
   • Give each plant about a liter of the mixture and pour it on the leaves and roots.
   • Repeat the treatment within three to five days.
   • You can sprinkle crushed eggshells around the plants to add calcium to the soil.
10. Repel birds with ornaments. Hang red ornaments at the top of the tomato cages. Birds think they are tomatoes and peck at them. The birds will be confused by the hard, tasteless surface of the ornaments, leaving your tomatoes alone.
    • Keep in mind that this only works temporarily. Before the tomatoes begin to ripen on your plants, place nets over your plants to repel birds.
11. Keep chickens and ducks in your yard. You can do this if your yard is big enough. Chickens and ducks like to eat slugs and caterpillars of pintail butterflies. Slugs and butterfly caterpillars can kill your plants by eating the leaves if you don't do anything to control them.
12. Fight slugs with cardboard. Put toilet rolls or paper towels on the stems of the plants when they are still young. The texture of the cardboard will prevent the slugs from climbing up the plants.
13. Grow plants that attract good insects. Some good choices include calendula, zinnias, marigolds, and climbers. These plants attract ladybugs and wasps that eat the aphids and caterpillars that would otherwise eat your tomato plants.

Tips

• If the stem or roots of a plant are damaged, you can often save the plant by burying much of the stem and lower branches again, just as you did with 75% of the plant when planting. The small hairs on the stem and branches grow into roots.
• Fertilize the plants with manure tea. If you have a dung pile, you can make your own fertilizer. Put the manure in pantyhose or a piece of cheesecloth. Put the "tea bag" in a bucket with 20 liters of water. Let the "tea" steep for a few days. Dilute the tea with the same amount of water.
• You can grow tomatoes you like by saving the seeds. However, you should first soak the seeds in a cup of warm water and some tomato juice for about a week. Then rinse the seeds and let them dry. Keep them and plant them the following year.
• You can plant offshoots that you have removed in moist soil to grow new tomato plants. You will then need larger branches. Only do this when the weather is warm enough, as these plants will mature later than the rest of your plants.
• If you want to prune offshoots from unidentified tomato plants, consider not removing the offshoots completely. Let them grow long enough for some leaves to grow and then just cut off the tips. This prevents too much energy from being used when growing long branches.